• by Jonathan Blum , May 11, 2010

The iPhone effect is about to go large. Very large.

How killer is the iPhone? The device has spurred an unprecedented round of development - not only in cell phones, but in anything portable from a GPS to a radio. It has also driven wider deployment of touch technologies all through the gadget-o-sphere. Mainstream makers like HP and Dell are all shipping touch-enabled PCs and printers these days. And that is only the start: The limits of what can be touch-enabled are expanding exponentially.

Take Portuguese Displax Interactive Systems. Later this year, the company, which supplies point-of-sale and marketing displays to the likes of Vodaphone, AT&T, Accenture and even the Obama Campaign - its displays tracked election-night results in VIP lounges  - will release a working prototype of its so-called Skin line of displays. 

Skin displays use transparent nanomesh polymer film that is roughly 50 millimeters or less thick applied to the back of any non-metallic surface: plastics, glass, biodegradable materials, heck, even wood will work. The nanomesh technology, developed from tools supplied by England-based Visual Planet, are so sensitive to pressure that it can not only detect the touch of a human hand, but also the water droplets from a human breath. 

That's right, the Displax display will know when you breathe on it.

Even more bizarre, because the technology is based on a physically mounted material, and not the electronic resistance from the human hand, as is the case with the iPhone, there is no theoretical limit on the size or even shape of a display.

"We see ourselves providing the touchiness for everything from LCD screens to point-of-sale products to a full line of consumer offerings," says Miguel Fonseca, chief business officer at Displax.

In fact, such next-gen touch tools are already finding their way into fascinating deployments. Visual Planet's technology was placed on a 92-inch touch-enabled screen inside a shipping container in Aker Brygge, a port in central Oslo. The portable interactive exhibit featured the history of Oslo on a touch-activated screen.
Others in the emerging world of touch displays are also seeing fresh demand.

Homer, N.Y.-based Panavision Imaging is developing touch-enabling technologies for large, odd-shaped displays. Panavision uses an infrared sensor hidden in the side of traditional monitors. These sensors cast an invisible light over the front of a screen and detect the shadows from fingers - or toes, for that matter - that are cast on surfaces. They then use that information to trigger a full range of touch experiences. 

"We see touch coming to anything and everything," says Jim Tan, vice president of worldwide marketing for Panavision." Consumers expect panels to be 3-D. "And they expect them to be touch-enabled. It offers good value at good cost."